Conference activities provide opportunities for attendees to connect and network with peers, industry experts, and potential collaborators. Pic Courtesy: Unsplash

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Benefits of Team Building Activities
3. 40 Team Building Activities
3.1 Human Knot
3.2 Perfect Square
3.3 Three Truths, One Lie
3.4 Office Debates
3.5 Community Service
3.6 Attending Conferences
3.7 Field Day
3.8 Pair Up
3.9 Three-Question Mingle
3.10 Scavenger Hunt
3.11 Office Trivia
3.12 Water Balloon Dodge Ball
3.13 Ongoing Tournament
3.14 Laser Tag
3.15 Won In 60 Seconds
3.16 The Amazing Race
3.17 Lip Sync
3.18 Escape from Pompei
3.19 Water Gun Fight
3.20 Bubble Football
3.21 Memory Wall
3.22 Mine Field
3.23 Shout Outs
3.24 The Communication Game
3.25 Blind Drawing
3.26 The Office FM
3.27 After-Work Running Club
3.28 Employee Beach Day
3.29 Ziplining
3.30 Guess The Emoji Board
3.31 Spelling Bee
3.32 Teaching New Skills
3.33 Book Discussions
3.34 Picnics
3.35 Birthday Line-Up
3.36 Treetop Adventure
3.37 Common Factor
3.38 Shredded
3.39 Work Therapy Sessions
3.40 Campfire
4. Key Takeaway

Are you a team strategist looking to engage your team members with new, refreshing, and exciting routines to make them more satisfied and productive? Or are you an HR manager looking for various strategies to pump up your workplace atmosphere? These 40 team-building activities will help you achieve your goal. 

Team building activities are activities that members of your team or employees engage in to grow interpersonal relationships, boost morale, encourage cooperation, and minimize workplace inefficiency. No doubt, your team will get exhausted sometimes and may even burn out; that’s why team-building activities are vital.

The team building activities we are about to show you, ranging from indoor fun group activities and games to serious activities like debates, conferences, and therapy sessions, can be done in any workspace and will work whether you are a small, mid-sized, or large corporation. And asides ensuring optimum work performance, they will help your team members learn, bond, and relax.

Let’s dive right in.

Benefits of Team Building Activities

Team building activities help to build your team in numerous ways. These engaging activities can help your team members discover their potential and learn how to work well together not only through digital devices but in real life.

Team building activities can help create a better working atmosphere and promote teamwork, especially in a workspace where workers are finding it hard to sync. Amongst other things, when your team members do tasks together, it can help clear up negative emotions and feelings they might have towards each other. 

40 Team Building Activities

So what are some of these activities you can do as a team? Let’s check them out.

We have listed our top 40 team building activities – from fun games and lighthearted activities to more serious activities that can help your team members build themselves and improve their skill sets. 

1. Human Knot

Caption: The sole purpose of the human knot puzzle is to develop team building, problem-solving, & communication skills among a group of people.

This is a 5-10 minute game that is just as it sounds. In this game, teammates come to an open space, form a circle facing inwards, then join their left hand and right with someone else other than the person at their immediate right or left. 

The goal of this activity is to unravel the knotted circle of joined hands while twisting, turning, and passing through each other’s hands. 

2. Perfect Square

Caption: The perfect square helps improve communication skills between your team members and encourages them to work together even when they can’t see the results yet.

To play this game, members of a team blindfold themselves and form a circle facing inwards, holding a piece of rope after they have assigned a leader who won’t be blindfolded. 

The players then step back a little and try to form a perfect square on the ground with the ropes while blindfolded. The assigned leader guides them while they do this.

3. Two Truths, One Lie

Caption: The Two truths, One lie game encourages your team members to learn more about themselves and understand each better.

In this game, members of a game sit together and form a circle. Then, following the circle, each player takes turns to tell three facts about themselves with one of the facts being a lie. The point of this activity is for listeners to figure out the lie among the three facts mentioned by a player.

4. Office Debates

Caption: Debates encourage healthy competition and make your team members appreciate different points of view and also carefully analyse them to find flaws.

In this activity, your team members gather in an event or presentation room – ideally with a board. Then, two members go head-to-head in a debate about an interesting topic. The winner is then determined by votes.

5. Community Service

Caption: Community service activities help your team members feel accomplished and more confident as they give back to the community and bond over doing good.

Community service is one of the best activities your employees can bond over while helping their surroundings and the people around them. You can organize your team members to clean the local beach, sanitize the block, visit an orphanage, etc. 

This activity teaches your employees the noble act of helping others even if they won’t get any reward.

6. Attending Conferences 

Caption: Conferences and events help your team members network, improve their knowledge, and get influenced positively by the accomplishments of other professionals.

By attending conferences and seminars together, your team members can build their skill sets and improve their understanding of the work they’re involved in. Q and As will also help different people share unique ideas that will benefit the whole team. Another great thing about attending conferences is they can provide a nice break from your work environment and help workers to maintain a strong sense of workplace culture and enthusiasm.

7. Field Day

Caption: Field day encourages your team members to stay fit and healthy, encourages positive competition, and also provides a healthy escape from all the work.

For field day, you can have up to 20 players grouped into 2, 3, or 4 teams and make them compete against one another. In this activity, teammates try out various field games like tug of war, split team mug, sac race, watery slip ‘n’ slide, etc.

8. Pair Up

Caption: Pair Up makes your team members improve their intuition through trial and error and produce results as quickly as possible. 

This is a fun game that involves writing famous pairs of anything e.g ‘king and queen’ or ‘mom and dad’ on two individual papers or sticky notes. Then stick the notes at the back of every player involved. The purpose of this game is for players to figure out what is written on their backs and also find their other pair. The first players to pair each the right phrases win the game.

9. Three-Question Mingle

Caption: The 3-question mingle helps participants and team members learn about each other and also improves communication skills.

This involves writing down three questions on three papers. Each player puts down their questions and then starts mingling until they find a partner. Afterward, each member in a pair asks and swaps questions with the other player. At the end of the game, players are asked what they learned about each other.

10. Scavenger Hunt

Caption: Scavenger hunts help your team members develop their observation skills and improve their intuition in finding hidden facts or patterns, under pressure

This is a fun activity that involves members of a team looking for items you’ve hidden. To play this game, create small teams and develop good scavenger hunt ideas or challenges. Players are to complete and find all hidden items as quickly as possible. The first team to find all items and complete all challenges wins the game.

11. Office Trivia

Caption: The Office Trivia creates a sense of community, encourages communication, and incites healthy competition. Team members also learn in the process.

This game involves dividing teammates of a workstation into a group of two. Then each group answers a list of questions pertaining to work or an exciting topic assigned to them. The group with the most correct answers wins the game. This is a fun game that also incites good competitive spirit.

12. Water Balloon Dodgeball 

Caption: The water balloon dodgeball game helps your team members stay fit, strategise, and work together to take down their competition.

Water balloon dodgeball is a game that involves two teams and a large bucket of water balloons on each side of a rectangular field. The goal is for one team to eliminate the other using the water balloons under a time limit. 

13. Ongoing tournament 

Caption: Ongoing tournaments give your team something to look forward to apart from work and help them develop strategies for long-term success.

In this activity, you can set up a long-term game or challenge that will span for months or even years. It could include a group chess tournament or a challenge on the first to lose the most weight in a year..

14. Laser Tag

Caption: Laser tag helps your team members get better at creating strategies and improving their motor skills, all the while staying fit and healthy.

To play laser tag, members of a team engage in a competitive game battle mode like a deathmatch or a capture-the-flag game. Each player is equipped with a weapon and sensor that represents their life in battle. 

Players attempt to hit the sensors of the enemy team to “kill” them. Depending on the game, the team to accomplish the goal wins.

15. Won in 60 seconds

Caption: Won in 60 seconds sets a time limit on achieving maximum results – helping your team members improve with repetition and staying productive under pressure.

This game involves players or groups competing in a challenge for just 60 seconds. These challenges are often casual, fun, and engaging tasks like using chopsticks to transfer beads from one bowl to another bowl, bouncing a ping pong ball into cups, etc.

16. The Amazing Race

Caption: The Amazing Race helps team members work together to achieve results while overcoming challenges on the way.

The amazing race is a fun racing activity with a twist. To play this game, two or more groups of teams engage in a race, then set difficult challenges at different intervals. The first team to finish the race while overcoming all the challenges wins.

17. Lip Sync

Caption: Lip syncing helps your team members understand speech and identify more words through mouth and lip movements while having fun.

This is an exciting activity where members of the team lip sync while recording. In these activities, players can wear costumes and props, and even choreograph some moves to spice up the activity. Lip-syncing promotes creativity, coordination, and effective teamwork.

18. Escape From Pompeii

Caption: Escape from Pompeii creates a tense atmosphere and boosts your team members’ instincts to get out of difficult situations and find their way around challenges.

Escape from Pompeii is a fun game where team members try to escape a mock volcanic eruption to survive on a raft.  To play this game, build a raft and add some stone-like structures in the field area. Afterward, you and the team should climb on the raft and try to get to the end post while avoiding the lava on the floor using the stone structures along the way.

19. Water gun fight

Caption: Water gun fights bring out the children in all of us. They encourage your team members’ playful spirits and help them strategise and work together.

Water gun fights are always fun and exciting, and can be played by a large team in an open field or recreational park. To play this game, inform every member of the team to bring spare clothes. Then fill some water guns and place them randomly on the open field. Then divide your members into two groups and make them distinguishable (e.g with different colored jerseys). At the start of the game, each member receives a gun and begins firing at the opposite team to eliminate them.

20. Bubble football

Caption: Bubble football encourages your team members to give their all without hesitating and gives them a confidence boost as they face challenges.

In this exciting game, players enter an inflated ball that looks like a zorb while playing football. Everyone, including other members, can engage in this game as it is very safe and engaging. Bubble football allows players to feel totally confident while playing, knowing that they can’t get bruised when they fall.

21. Memory Wall

Caption: Memory walls create a positive atmosphere in the workplace and encourage team bonding as everyone contributes to the shared memory.

This is a fun activity that spreads positivity and good vibes around the workspace. In this activity, players are handed a pen and sticky notes to write down a nice memory they share with someone. Then the player and their memory partners make some drawings about their favorite memories together. The drawings are then pinned to a board in the office.

 22. Minefield

Caption: The Minefield is a great game that encourages trust and improves communication skills between team members.

This is a great game for honing communication and listening skills. In this game, different objects are placed all over the floor, then a player from each team wears blindfolds in an attempt to get to the finish line without touching any of the objects. Other players stay at the starting line calling out verbal instructions to lead their teammates playing. Even if both players touched an object, the player that first reaches the finish line wins.

23. Shout Outs

Caption: Shoutouts make your team members feel encouraged to do more and celebrated for their achievements. 

This is a nice activity where one employee or worker gets the chance to appreciate his or herself every day. The employee does this by calling out his accomplishments and that of his colleagues enthusiastically to build morale and promote encouragement.

24. The Communication Game

Caption: The communication game helps your team members learn to communicate and listen more effectively, and also boosts team morale and cooperation.

The communication game is an easy game where a team lines up vertically in a straight line and performs a short mime. The first person that performs the mime taps on the shoulder of the person in front, who does the same movement. This goes on until the progression or rhythm gets to the last person.. If the starting moves match the moves of the last player, then the team wins.

25. Blind Drawing

Caption: Blind drawing is another very effective communication-boosting game that teaches team members to communicate more effectively and achieve results together.

In this game, players form pairs and sit back to back. One of them is given a pen and paper while the other is given an image of an object. The player with the image tries to describe it to the other player with the pen and paper so they can draw it. The players are faced with the challenge of analyzing their communication skills to accomplish the task.

26. Office FM

Caption: The Office FM game boosts team morale, and involvement and encourages diversity. Your team members learn to appreciate each other’s preferences and uniqueness.

Office FM is a fun activity where players contribute different songs to a shared playlist. You can select different themes every week and allow all employees to contribute a song or track that relates to that theme. This helps boost engagement, morale, and collaboration between teammates.

27. After-work Running Club

Caption: A running club encourages your team members to achieve their goals together and also creates something to look forward to after work.

After a very stressful work day, running or jogging is a way to destress and have something to look forward to. You can run create a running club with your team members and cover laps without necessarily racing. You can use  an open field, a park, or a quiet street and run with your team members.. 

28. Employee Beach Day

Caption: Employee beach day allows your team members to create fun memories together while having fun and relaxing from work.

You can schedule Employee Beach Day where you visit the beach and relax on the shore with your team members. You can plan for days during the weekend when all employees will be free, and also plan extracurricular activities you’ll do at the beach. 

29. Ziplining 

Caption: Ziplining helps your team members get a healthy adrenaline rush, improve their self esteems, and encourage a sense of accomplishment.

You can take your employees ziplining at a popular park or resort where they’ll ride over spectacular scenery and make happy memories together. This activity allows employees to subconsciously support the success of their team members which promotes camaraderie.

30. Guess The Emoji Board

Caption: Guess The Emoji Board encourages your team members to communicate more often and understand themselves better.

Guess the emoji board is a fun guessing game for your employees. The game involves players sending a message containing their recently used emoji to other team members. Every other player then tries to guess which emoji boards belong to who.

31. Spelling Bee

Caption: Spelling bees help improve your team members’ vocabularies and learn more words to communicate more effectively in their work.

Organizing spelling bees for your team members will help them flex their spelling skills and learn interesting and difficult words in the process. You can divide a team into two groups and have them compete against each other. The team that spells the most words correctly, wins.

32. Teaching new skills

Caption: Out-of-work skills give your team members new things to do and make them feel more fulfilled.

33. Book Discussions 

Caption: Book discussions encourage group involvement and help everyone share new ideas and individual viewpoints that may not have occurred to others.

Like teaching new skills, this is another educational activity where members of a team or all the employees in a workspace come together to discuss a particular book that’s been read by everyone. To play this game, choose an exciting book and set a deadline for everyone to gather and discuss the book.

34. Picnics

Caption: Picnics help your team members create happy memories and do activities together in a relaxed atmosphere. They’ll also bond and become more like a family.

Few things bond people like good food and amazing scenery. You can achieve both with a picnic. Your team members can bring food to share, books to read and discuss, and games for everyone to play. A picnic in a beautiful park will help your employees relax and bond. 

35. Birthday Line-up

Caption: Birthday lineups allow your team members to know each other’s birthdays and celebrate them when the day arrives, and also improve communication.

This is a fun activity that can be done in the office to encourage engagement. Birthday lineups basically involve getting all team members to line up according to their birth dates (from the earliest to the latest). The fun part is that players can’t talk to themselves but use only gestures and hand signals to communicate their birth dates. 

36. Treetop Adventure 

Caption: Treetop adventures help your team members dare and overcome their fears while having a healthy adrenaline rush.

Treetop adventures and games can boost the confidence of your teammates and help them overcome their fear of heights. While tethered securely, your team members play games, high in the trees, and compete to outdo each other.

37. Common Factor

Caption: Common factor helps your team members with similar interests find themselves and bond quickly. Factions in the workplace work together most efficiently.

This is an activity that helps teammates with common interests or characteristics bond. Throw questions to everyone or organize different games for your team members to choose from. People with similar interests will give similar answers or choose similar games and can bond and build relationships in the process. 

38. Shredded

Caption: Shredded encourages creativity, teamwork, and healthy competition. Your team members will also learn to think outside the box to solve problems.

This is an activity that involves team members working in groups to create industry products from random elements in the office. For example, the tech department coming up to bring a solution to a new problem. Different groups engage in this exercise and work on the best results to avoid being shredded by the competition.

39. Work Therapy Sessions

Caption: Work therapy sessions help your team members improve their mental health and be in an excellent state of mind to work productively.

Taking a break from work sometimes is necessary to maintain a healthy work-life balance. You can organize therapy sessions or invite professional therapists to discuss with your team members and help them open up and work on their mental health.  

40. Campfire

Caption: Organizing a campfire is an especially great idea during the colder winter months. Your team members can bond and create happy memories over the warm light.

Campfires are a timeless activity groups of people can bond over and are great especially during the colder winter months. Plan a location and date ahead, organize for food and drinks, and accommodation or tents if you plan to stay the night. Your team members can have group discussions, listen to music, play games and unwind.

Key Takeaway 

Your team members will do the best work and produce the best results when they are in sync. As humans, we work best with people we know and understand. So whether you have new employees in your organization or team morale is dying down from routine, engaging your employees in the team-building activities we discussed above will help them bond, connect, and evolve into an unstoppable powerhouse that’ll smash through company goals.  If your team is large, then don’t worry as our article, 30 Must-Try Team Building Activities For Large Groups will help you engage with and manage your team better.

Taking your team members to events and conferences is an excellent way to help them connect over a shared activity and learn while at it. Looking for the best conferences or events to attend with your employees?

Eventible is the first-of-its-kind event review/listing platform that gives  attendees, speakers, and sponsors the opportunity to leave their reviews, post the completion of an event. 

At Eventible, we list the best events worth attending based on authentic reviews and ratings from informed professionals and provide you and relevant stakeholders with all the important information required for you to decide on the next conference to attend.  So check us out today!

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